Nell Stevens: Everything About This Book Has Felt Surprising
In this interview, author Nell Stevens discusses the pendulum of mystery in her new novel, The Original.
Nell Stevens is the author of Briefly, a Delicious Life and two memoirs, Bleaker House and The Victorian and the Romantic. She is an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Warwick and lives in Oxfordshire, England. Follow her on X (Twitter), Instagram, and Bluesky.
In this interview, Nell discusses the pendulum of mystery in her new novel, The Original, her hope for readers, and more.
Name: Nell Stevens
Literary agent (if one): Emma Parry at Janklow & Nesbit U.S., Rebecca Carter at Rebecca Carter Literary U.K.
Book title: The Original
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Release date: July 1, 2025
Genre/category: Historical fiction
Previous titles: Briefly; A Delicious Life; The Victorian and the Romantic; Bleaker House
Elevator pitch: Grace has lived a life shaped by secrecy ever since she was sent to her uncle’s house as a child. But when a man arrives claiming to be her long-lost cousin Charles, her search for the truth threatens to expose the secrets she’s spent her life trying to keep hidden.
What prompted you to write this book?
For a long time I’ve been fascinated by fake art—and particularly by the experiences of people who’ve been duped by it. At the same time, I was carrying around an idea for a story about someone confronted by a man claiming to be a long-lost relative and having to decipher the truth. It was only when I realized these two ideas belonged in the same book that I came to write The Original.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
I first began thinking about this story 12 years ago, and in fact wrote a different (unpublished!) novel trying to get my head around it. So, in that sense, this book has been a very long time in the making. But the bulk of the novel in its present form was written in the autumn of 2023, which doesn’t feel long ago at all. It was a very intense writing process; my youngest child was a baby, and I wrote in the early mornings in the dark house before she woke up. It made the whole process—the writing, but also the story itself—feel dreamlike, and I think gave the story space to announce itself to me, rather than the other way around, me telling the story what I wanted it to be.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
Working with editors on this story was invaluable because it is at heart a mystery—is cousin Charles really who he says he is?—and I needed someone else to highlight those moments where it becomes too obvious what the answer is. My editor and I used the metaphor of a pendulum when we were working on the book; the pendulum swings between “yes” and “no” but it can’t rest on one side or the other, it has to immediately swing back again to keep the reader guessing. It was fascinating and quite humbling to see moments in my writing that my editors thought showed my hand.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
Perhaps because of the way I wrote it, in those dark early hours of the morning when my family was still asleep and it almost felt like I was too, everything about this book has felt surprising. It was more proactively plotted than anything I’ve written before because it’s quite a complex, delicate story, but even so, I never knew what was going to happen on the page.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
I hope this book is an immersive read that takes its readers to a different place entirely, where they might confront some parts of the world we live in now. I’d like to play a part in helping someone think through their own feelings the questions the book asks—about money, about authenticity, about making art and feeling strange.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
I’m borrowing this from my very dear mentor and writing teacher Leslie Epstein, who recently died: The only thing that really interests us about other people is what they say and what they do. When I feel a story slipping away from me, I return to the reassuringly concrete—what my characters say, what my characters do—and all the rest, the emotional and thematic and abstract stuff that swirls around the action, tends to fall into place.
